Left: Native-born Imani at Montrose Beach, April 2023. (Courtesy of Matthew Dolkart) Right: A piping plover egg – a product of piping plover pair Imani and Searocket – recently spotted at Montrose Beach. (Courtesy of Chicago Park District)

Expectations are running even higher for a successful piping plover breeding season in Chicago now that it’s been revealed Imani and Sea Rocket are incubating not one but four eggs in a protected area of Montrose Beach.

It’s the first nesting attempt for both birds, after Imani spent two prior summers flying solo at Montrose without a mate. Initial nesting efforts can be fraught, with inexperienced parents-to-be not necessarily choosing the best sites to raise a family. That was the case with Monty and Rose — Imani’s parents — who picked a Waukegan parking lot as their first (doomed) nesting site.

Imani and Sea Rocket made a wiser selection, opting for a location far enough from the water to minimize concerns the nest could be washed away.

The pair’s first egg was reported at the end of May, and plovers typically lay additional eggs every other day. Parents share incubation duties once the clutch is complete — in this case, four eggs — and chicks hatch roughly 28 days after the last egg is laid.

A protective cage surrounds the nest and volunteer plover monitors keep watch for predators or other hazards, including humans or off-leash dogs encroaching on the fenced-off habitat.

Wildlife officials surround piping plover nests with protective enclosures, like this one used in 2021 to guard plover eggs on the shore of Lake Erie in Ohio. (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Midwest Region)

Baby piping plovers are arriving fast and furious on beaches across the Great Lakes, with the Great Lakes Piping Plover Recovery Effort reporting 105 chicks as of June 15, hatched from 31 nests.

Another 32 nests are still being incubated, including the nest at Montrose Beach and one a little further north at Illinois Beach State Park.

The current piping plover pair count is 77, just shy of a record 80 pairs in 2023. While that represents a huge jump from the 13 pairs left in the wild in the 1990, it’s still far short from the recovery goal of 150 pairs.

The Great Lakes population of piping plovers — listed as federally endangered — once numbered nearly 800 breeding pairs. Monty and Rose were the first pair to nest in Chicago in more than 70 years.

Contact Patty Wetli: @pattywetli | (773) 509-5623 | [email protected]